Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

Are you a perfectionist?

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As a professional organizer, I encounter perfectionism a lot. Many, if not most, of my clients are perfectionists. What I’ve seen over the years is that their perfectionism gets in the way of their ability to organize, because they either don’t feel they know enough to start, or they get discouraged because things aren’t going perfectly and stop. Then they call in reinforcements (in the form of me and/or my team).

I’ve been thinking about perfectionism a lot because I’ve started a podcast, with my friend and life coach Shannon Wilkinson, called Getting to Good Enough. In the weekly podcast, we discuss perfectionism and how it can get in the way of accomplishing the things you want do. We provide lots of suggestions for overcoming perfectionism so you more of what you love (like genealogy). Shannon is a newer genealogist and was with me at RootsTech this year–I expect there will be at least one genealogy-related episode!

I think many genealogists who find themselves surrounded by paper might be perfectionists. Some of them may be searching before the perfect system before they’ll start organizing and when it doesn’t appear (because there is no such think as a perfect genealogy organizing system), things pile up until they’re overwhelmed.

Also, some genealogists may avoid doing source citations because creating a perfect source citation so feels challenging  they don’t do it at all or decide they’ll do it later. (That’s a feeling I could relate to at the very beginning of my genealogy life.) Genealogy research logs might also fall into the category of things that perfectionist genealogists may avoid doing for fear of doing it wrong. (That’s why I’m satisfied with my “good enough” research log.)

If you can relate to these things, you might want to listen to the podcast! Go to our website, Getting to Good Enough, to listen to individual episodes or click on the iTunes link to subscribe to the podcast. You can also subscribe by email, if you’d like. (Scroll to the website’s footer for that sign up.)

Shannon and I have had a great time recording the episodes and we hope that you find them helpful and fun. It’s a fun new adventure for us!

 

It’s my 6th blogiversary!

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Today is the sixth anniversary of my first post on Organize Your Family History. I started the blog as a way to marry my love for organizing with my love for genealogy. It’s grown past my expectations (though to be honest, I hadn’t spent much time on expectations). And I’ve grown as a genealogist along the way.

In my first four blogiversary posts, I cited some statistics about the blog but last year I realized that has to be pretty boring to anybody but me. Last year I created a blogiversary post about how I’d evolved as a genealogist since starting the blog. I re-read that post this morning and really liked it. So I decided to update it, rather than creating a new blogiversary post from scratch.

One of the great things about having a blog is that your history is at your disposal. So here’s my evolution as a genealogist over the last six years, as documented on this blog:

  • I’m almost completely paperless. On August 12, 2012, I wrote, “I’m a paper person. I know I could (and perhaps should) save documents, like census images, as pdfs and just organize them on my computer. But I really like printing them out and keeping them in files. So that’s what I do.” Wow. Nowadays I almost never print anything out and the documents are beautifully organized on my computer. I’ve developed an awesome digital workflow that works really well for me. (In October 2017, I added a helpful post called How I process a downloaded document.) And I’ve even coauthored (with scanning guru Brooks Duncan) The Paperless Genealogy Guide. What a difference six years makes!
  • I now understand that researching away from my desk can be really beneficial. Six years ago, all my research was done online, from my desk. And that was great. But now I’ve gone on some great research trips, both library trips and cemetery trips. (I need to start doing courthouse trips!) They enhance my research so much. Trips that take me to where my ancestors lived make me feel closer to them. I’m planning a trip to Kentucky this fall where I hope to visit cemeteries, libraries, courthouses and an archive. Can’t wait!
  • I’m finally keeping a research log. In 2012 I wrote about keeping a research log. I had the best of intentions, but it didn’t stick. At least once a year, I would resolve to try again. And I would fail. At the end of 2016, I set a goal of creating a genealogy research log habit in 2017 and I set up a Facebook group for those who also want to create the habit, Genealogy Research Loggers. (Feel free to join us; it’s a pretty quiet group.) I’m proud to say that I’ve kept up the habit! Part of my success is the simplicity of the log I keep. But it’s doing its job of keeping me focused and helping me remember what I’ve researched and where I am in my research. It’s definitely worth the effort (and by now it feels like almost no effort)!
  • I’m researching more frequently. Thanks to the 30 x 30 challenges I started in 2015 (in which I challenge myself and my readers to do 30 minutes of genealogy research each day for 30 days), I’m getting a lot more research done. And since I have a research log in which I write next steps, I don’t have the barrier of deciding what to work on when I sit down to start a research session. The result is more frequent researching, though the sessions may be shorter. I actually researched every day from August 1, 2017 until I went to RootsTech at the end of February 2018! In the process, I learned that daily research can be really valuable. It keeps my head in the game and keeps genealogy top of mind.
  • I’m more focused. One of the challenges I find with genealogy research is that as the family tree grows, there are so many opportunities to explore new things (or shiny objects). At the beginning of 2014, I created a scheme in which I would focus on one family line (that is the ancestors of one grandparent) each quarter. That helped me maintain some focus. In 2017, I decided I would spend the whole year focused on one line, my paternal grandfather’s line. I imagine that might sound boring to some, but I love it! It happens that my grandfather’s grandfather has a 138-document Civil War pension file that is rich with information and offers lots of clues to explore. I transcribed the whole thing and entered data from it into Reunion and it became the basis for much exploration of his descendants. I’ve stuck with the Adams family line for the past year but plan to shift my focus to my father’s maternal line, the Rascos, at the beginning of July.
  • I started researching my collateral lines extensively. In 2012, I was focused solely on my direct lines. Then I started adding children from censuses to my tree. But in the past year I did some really enjoyable deep dives into some of my collateral lines. (I was going to deep that I worried I was researching too far out on the branches of my tree.) I let go of that worry and now have an appreciation for how recording every bit of information can pay huge dividends later.
  • I went from a conference attendee to a conference speaker! I love conferences, especially genealogy conferences. Since 2013, I’ve been to more than a dozen genealogy conferences, ranging from smaller local or regional conferences to RootsTech, which draws some 10,000 to 20,000 attendees. In February 2017 I was thrilled to be a presenter at RootsTech. I co-presented, with Brooks Duncan (my Paperless Genealogy Guide co-writer), a session called Go Paperless: Streamline and Digitize Your Research. In October 2017, I did a talk on going paperless at the St. Louis Genealogy Conference and am slated to speak there again in October 2018. If you have any topics you’d like to hear my speak about at a conference, feel free to suggest them!
  • I collaborated with Family Tree University and Family Tree Magazine. Thanks to my popular How They Do It series, I was asked by Family Tree University to create and host a What the Pros Know: Genealogy Organizing Tips in January 2018. And the editor of Family Tree Magazine asked me to create a feature article from the interviews. Then I was asked to host a second What the Pros Know workshop, this one on Research Secrets of the Pros. These have been fun to do and I’m grateful for the exposure!

Bloggers are really fortunate in that reading blog archives can bring to mind long-forgotten memories. I’ve enjoyed putting together this post to remind me how far I’ve come in the last six years. I want to thank you for reading the blog and give thanks those of you who comment and especially those I’ve met in person. This blog has enhanced my life and I’m very grateful!

Creating bio sketches of your ancestors

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Reader (and professional genealogist) Maria Tello commented in my recent post on shifting my focus that she is in the process of creating biographical sketches for each of her ancestors, so that she can pass information on to her children and grandchildren, who are not genealogists.

I was intrigued by the idea and asked her to give me a little more information, along with an example.

Maria wanted to make her research more easily understood by her children and grandchildren, she is writing these short sketches of each ancestor. Her research on some of her lines goes back to the 15th century, so it’s a big task!

I’m thoroughly impressed that Maria’s goal is to write one of these each day. I think that’s a wonderful way to make an overwhelming project seem much more attainable.

Maria said that she used the Register Style Template from the New England Historic Genealogical Society as the basis for her sketches. I love that sources and footnotes are a prominent part of the template.

Here’s a sample sketch, of one of Maria’s ancestors on her father’s side. She explains, “My accreditation is in Mexico and the bulk of my research is done in Spanish language areas. I used tools that were developed for New England colonial area research, however, and that works splendidly.”

Click on this link to read Maria’s sketch of José Anastasio Tello.

Maria reports that her children not only have found the sketches easy to understand but they’re actually grateful for them!

In addition to the obvious benefit of having an easily understood way to present genealogical information to those who follow you, I can see how useful this exercise is to find holes in your research. I can also see its benefits for reacquainting yourself with your ancestors.

Reunion, the genealogy software I use, will create these reports automatically, I discovered. But Maria and I discussed the benefits to doing them by hand. There’s a big difference between creating something and reading something. (This is part of a larger post I’m contemplating on manual versus automatic in genealogy–keep an eye out.)

As I look toward shifting to a different family line in my own research, I think I’m going to take the time to write a bio sketch for the main ancestor I’ve been researching, George Washington Adams (1845-1938) before I say goodby to him for a little while. I think it should be a fun exercise.

Maria, thank you so much for sharing what you’re doing! And best of luck completing all the profiles!

 

My first article in Family Tree Magazine!

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I’m excited to report that an article I wrote is published in the current (July/August 2018) edition of Family Tree Magazine! It’s called Genealogy Organization Secrets the Pros Know and it’s based on the interviews I did for the What the Pros Know: Genealogy Organizing Tips workshop I hosted for Family Tree University earlier this year.

The expert sources for the article are Thomas MacEntee, Joshua Taylor, Drew Smith, and Denise Levenick. I’m so grateful to them for talking with me.

For ten years before I started my organizing business in 2005, I was a freelance pet writer. I wrote primarily for newspapers and magazines, though in the latter years I wrote books. (You can check out my titles at Amazon.)

So magazine writing is not new for me, but I have to admit it was a thrill to have a genealogy article appear under my byline in a major national magazine. And note the optimism in this post’s title…I’m hoping there will be more!

I was able to read the article through this link, though it may be for premium members only. You can purchase and download the whole digital edition of the magazine here.

While it’s nice to see digital version on the website, I’m looking forward to holding the physical magazine in my hands. (Never mind that usually prefer digital documents to paper. This is different!)